Category Archives: poetry

Since I’ve been experiencing in the last month ‘the difficult art of prose’ in a foreign language (text will be rewritten three times, here’s the Italian original, definitely better) I’ve googled the said words and have found this article by Thomas Wright on Oscar Wilde that I liked quite a lot (and which incidentally considers the notion in an entirely different way.)

Apart from the difference between poetry writing and prose writing, the article is rich with details about Oscar Wilde’s education at Oxford (it seems that Wilde’s poetry blossomed at Oxford; then Walter Pater came and said: “Why do you always write poetry?”)

“During his undergraduate years Wilde also perfected the persona—part aesthete, part Disraelian dandy, and part Athenian philosopher—with which he would later make a splash in London’s artistic and social circles.

The aesthetic flaneur who liked to pose as a ‘dilettante trifling with his books’ at Oxford was really only pretending to be wicked. The truth was, Wilde read hard ‘surreptitiously, into the small hours’ in a bedroom bursting with books and cigarette smoke.”

“Along with all the primary and secondary set texts of his Greats course,” – Thomas Wright goes on – “he devoured at Magdalen the writings of Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Clifford, Buckle, and Spencer, drawing from them the central tenets of his own intellectual credo.”

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After analysing the influence played on O.W. by Walter Pater and his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), the article mentions John Addington Symonds’ two-volume Studies of the Greek Poets (1873 & 1876), another of Wilde’s “golden books.”

“Studies offers an imaginative analysis of most of the surviving corpus of Greek literature; Symonds also discusses Greek historiography, mythology, philosophy, and the genius of Greek art. In the late 19th century, classical works were often regarded, in Mahaffy’s words, as ‘mere treasure-houses of roots and forms to be sought out by comparative grammarians’, with many classicists focusing solely on the linguistic minutiae of the texts. The historicist school of scholarship was also prominent in the period […]

In Studies, Symonds eschewed both philological and historicist approaches. He attempted instead to enter [emphasis by MoR] into a stimulating dialogue, across the centuries, with the ancients. He regarded the Greeks as essentially modern men, whose literature spoke directly to 19th-century readers.He also believed that the ancients had exercised a profound influence on contemporary culture. “Except the blind forces of nature,” he declared, “nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin”—a phrase that Wilde would quote with approval. Symonds drew attention to the many points at which modern and ancient cultures touched, comparing Aristophanes to Mozart, Aeschylus to Shakespeare, Greek Myth to Medieval Romance, and Greek drama to European Opera. Wilde marked many of these parallels in his copy of Studies.

A side note by MoR. Symonds’ approach is extreme and simplistic. He doesn’t consider:

1. That the Greeks were just dwarfs on the shoulder of giants (their mythology, philosophy, science and art would not exist without the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the entire Fertile Crescent up to Mesopotamia) 2. that these giants were in their turn dwarfs, at their beginnings, on the shoulders of someone else (even though deprived of writing) 3. Rome’s substantial, and creative, contribution 4. the contribution of India and China, equally substantial 4. the Arabs etc.

And yet in many ways he is right, in my view, as this blog tries to point out in various ways (see a list of posts below, although ‘a quirky research on Romanness’ says it all’.)

You are sadistic. Checking your exchanges it turns Andreas once wrote: “Ah, Man of Roma, you finally got Anglo-Saxons just need to be spanked.” Therefore, with a story that never starts … you keep them walking on thin ice ”

Old Man: “Or on a razor’s edge, my domina. Although, your words making me upset, I will leave this room right now.”

[Exit]

*Flavia and Fulvia pale. They’ve caught a glimpse of a paddle’s (or of a whip’s) handle flashing from MoR’s large tunic*

*The buds look unaffected. But Cyberqwil the Austrian is snickering & Pavlos the Greek merchant too, although his eyes are lost in the sees where he belongs*

Ψ

The Anglo-Saxons, ça va sans dire, control their emotions much better than we Latin do – *MoR is thinking* – also because (despite their virtues and staggering achievements) showing and accepting emotions is not their forte.

Which makes them even more addictive.

And yet, MoR’s probing mind – he always lived with women, incidentally – is sensing like glimmers in their eyes (the men and the women alike.)

No, no no, mamma mia!

If THAT is what they need (Andreas is always right, he’s German no kidding) my novel will make them blush.

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At the other end of Europe, on a rainy island, Erika Leonard aka E. L. James is paling too.

For reasons nobody can fathom.

So far.

Related stuff:

[ I’ll take my time, although I’ll start with:

i.Andreas Kluth aka Hannibal Man in a TED conference on ‘failure and success in life’ as impostors (see If, by R. Kipling)

Mario: “Don’t get it. Bengali Indians and NOT all Indians?”Manius: “Sir Rabindranath Tagore is Bengali: a genius polymath shedding light, in his sublime way, on harmonious Love, among the rest. Giovanni btw knows only two Bengali bloggers.”

[whose parents being ‘harmonious’ were though man and woman, ie different]

Let us start.

Nikos Kazantzakis’
Twin Currents of Blood

Nikos Kazantzakis, a modern Greek genius. Click for attribution and additional infos

How do children from ‘struggling’ loves react?

In his spiritual autobiography (Report to Greco) Greek Nikos Kazantzakis from Crete (Νίκος Καζαντζάκης, 1883 – 1957) mentions several times this crucial relationship that shaped his life (and work.)

Two quotes.

1. “The influence of this [….] hoax – Kazantzakis writes -, of this delusion (if it is a delusion) that twin currents of blood, Greek from my mother and Arab from my father, run in my veins, has been positive and fruitful, giving me strength, joy and wealth. My struggle to make a synthesis of these two antagonistic impulses has lent purpose and unity to my life.”

2. “Both of my parents circulate in my blood, the one fierce, hard, and morose, the other tender, kind, and saintly.

I have carried them all my days; neither has died. As long as I live they too will live inside me and battle in their antithetical ways to govern my thoughts and actions.”

“My lifelong effort is to reconcile them so that one may give me their strength, the other their tenderness to make the discord between them, which breaks out incessantly within me, turn to harmony inside their son’s heart.”

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Reconcile them … eg the discord which breaks out incessantly turning to harmony. How can one not adore Kazantzakis (also for making dialectics clearer, I hope?)

Piercing the Darkness of Time

“Tagore (রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর) was possibly the greatest writer in modern Indian literature, “Bengali poet, novelist, educator, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore was awarded the knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators protesting colonial laws.”

MoR: “Hi Jenny, how are you? […] May I reblog your WTM post? It is consistent with my ‘sublimity & scurrility’ blog theme which, in the Roman culture of ALL time, are intertwined like two close trees whose trunks have grown upwards together as a single shaft, mutually distorting … but mutually exhilarating.”

Jenny: “Hey Roma! Great to hear from you. Of course you may repost as you please. Sledpress was spectacular in her commentary, I recall. […] Are you blogging again? […] You can’t imagine how much mileage [… I got from your blog …] with every Italian I meet.
“Chi dice donna, dice danno” gets a great reaction every time! :-)

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[Click on the image for credits. Courtesy of Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times. MoR]

“The path of true love never did run smooth” by Talbot Hughes, English Painter (1869–1942). Many paintings from the Victorian era referred to literary quotes, like this one, whose title is from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, 1, 134

Olaf Stapledon.
“Like two close trees whose trunks …”

“ONE night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill … Overhead, obscurity. I distinguished our own house, our islet in the tumultuous and bitter currents of the world. There, for a decade and a half, we two, so different in quality, had grown in and in to one another, for mutual support and nourishment, in intricate symbiosis […]

True, of course, that as a long-married couple we fitted rather neatly, like two close trees whose trunks have grown upwards together as a single shaft, mutually distorting, but mutually supporting. Coldly I now assessed her as merely a useful, but often infuriating adjunct to my personal life. We were on the whole sensible companions. We left one another a certain freedom, and so we were able to endure our proximity.”

How do Darwin and Hegel Enter into the Equation?

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Note, to be read when despondent :-)

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Tough material (for the writer as well as the reader.)

If it’s any consolation: even though thanks to my work with Magister, 40 years ago, I was able to absorb (in only a few months) tiny bits of the essence of Plato, Croce, Gramsci – in other words, various sides of the weird dialectics possibly invented 24 centuries ago in Athens (we’ll need to skip Indian dialectics here) …

… despite I mean this past history of sudden germination – I ran up against “Hegel’s block.”

My Mentor kept telling me Hegel was no inferior to Plato and Aristotle. Magister being Magister, I was frustrated.

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In later years I absorbed Hegel a bit by reading some Gramsci and Croce, although I sensed that Hegel’s deep core, plus the capacity (far more important) to have fun reading this Master’s works – I never quite fathomed.

A New διδάσκαλος

Now one year ago it turned (in only a few months, again!) that reading Hegel though still hard was suddenly exhilarating …

As promised in the previous post here are some of the oral Greek poems collected on the field from the Griko people – South Italians who still speak Greek.

It is a selection from the book Il tesoro delle parole morte (Argo, 2009, Lecce) by Brizio Montinaro which regards the Griko poetry from Salento, Apulia. Some of these poems were collected by Montinaro himself, whose mother is Griko.

My translation is inadequate and in progress. Any suggestion is welcome. I’ll provide the Greek text of the first poem only.

Knife your eyes Swords your eyebrows: They play with the heart Games of great art.

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That curl so fair
That is bending under your ear
Woven with silk thread,
The most beautiful of your whole head.
Ah had I that curl in my hand!
Out of joy I would fly to heaven’s land.

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Here comes the sun, the moon, the star,
Here comes the maiden who breaks my heart apart.
Here is she who points a knife at me
And chases me away but I cannot but stay.

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Your bosom hides two lemons
That send such a sweet scent.
Give at least one of them to us
To turn over in our hands.
“I hoe, I water, I do not offer lemons.
Go to the gardener, maybe there will be grace.”

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Wherever you go, young man,
May the sun not burn you, and a cloud
May appear in the sky to protect you.

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The wind came
And took away your scarf
And it removed my hat
Uncovering your fair neck.
That night happily I slept.

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When you see me, as a viper you hide in the bush:
I am he who put your breasts upside down.

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Girl of mine, it was night when we kissed.
By whom were we seen?
By the night, by the dawn, by the star and the moon.
The star bowed and told the sea,
The sea told the oar, the oar told the sailor,
And the sailor sang it at the door of his love.

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I kissed red lips and they dyed my own,
I cleaned them with a cloth
And they dyed the cloth.
I washed the cloth in the river and it dyed the river
Which dyed the beach shore and it dyed the sea floor.
An eagle came down to drink and dyed its wings,
And the sun was half dyed and the moon in the full.

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May I become a swallow and enter your room
And make my nest in your pillow.

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And I wish I were a flea from here
To get like a hawk into your bed,
And nibble all that flesh,
And you’d let down your hand and catch me!

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Martano, one of the Griko towns of Salento. A poem below refers to it. Click for credits

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I sigh and burn,
And my heart drips blood.
But the pain is sweet
When I suffer for you.

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As maiden I loved you, as woman I had you not,
Soon the time will arrive when as widow you’ll be mine.

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Foolish was I to love you!
Like the wind you never stop.
Better had I loved a wall,
It would perhaps have stopped a moment.
Better had I loved a stone,
It would have softened and something I’d have had.
But I have loved you instead, the Galanto,
Who enchanted Martano with his canto.

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I sent you four apples,
One with a bite,
And in the mid of the bite
I placed a kiss.